Welcome to the forum! Congrats on your new M.

Any thoughts or advice?

Yes - do a LOT more of what you have already started doing.

I've been playing with the different sounds

That is the best way we know - basically kicking the tires and listening to what's under the hood.

#1 - Approach a preset as a DEMO of what can be done on the instrument. Many, if not most, presets are NOT of the 'out of the box ready to go' type. The sound designer will often highlight a particular aspect. And what sounds good in one venue/environment may sound like crap in a much smaller/larger space or when played with competing instruments: quartet versus orchestra.

#2 - Consider a synth to be like a computer in that it will do ONLY what it has been programmed to do. And the M models have a LOT of programming that is possible.

#3 - create you own, customized, set of performances so that you will always know what they are programmed to do. Audition a sound. While the audition plays pay attention to all of the front panel lights, knobs and display values. Are the scene buttons lighting up to show scene changes? Do you see the super knob lights moving? Are the slider lights changing? All of those things indicate automation going on under the covers and all of that automation has been programmed to happen.

#4 - analyze each preset you audition to check for the most common programming that is happening. Are motion sequences and/or arpeggios being used? How many scenes are used - what does each one do? What control assignments have been made?

#5 - save a user copy of any preset that is of interest to you. Then build-out your gig performances by using your pre-examined presets as a starting point. Give each performance a unique name. It can be useful later to actually create a small doc for each performance where you make notes of what programming it has in it. Yeah - that is a pain in the rear but it's a lot easier to refer to your own notes later than to have to pull up the performance on the instrument and do a 'deep dive' later.  

The CFX2 is pretty good, but I noticed the velocity offset needs to be boosted a little bit for the semi-weighted action on the m6.

Give yourself a 'pat on the back' when you find things like that. Those are EXACTLY the sort of thing meant above about presets not necessarily being appropriate for all use cases. Many of the presets have been ported from other instruments (Motif, Moxf) so some of the settings will reflect what was done on those prior models. And, as you noticed, keybeds can, and often are, different on different models.

Even a preset designed for the M functionality will usually sound different on an M6 than on an M7/M8 or between a Modx M and  Montage M model simply because of the different keybed.

Design and test a sound in you home studio and it may sound different on a different model at a gig if you don't take your instrument with you.

It also had some dropouts when layered with other sounds.

Hmmm - did I mention that presets can have some 'weird' stuff in them? Again - this is where a thorough analysis is often needed to know whether a preset will work for you 'as is' or if it can be tweaked to fit your needs.

Forgive the length explanation but your simple statement above is a GOOD example of what you can run into with the presets.

1. On a Montage M8X that performance has only 1 part and that part has 17 elements. If you examine each element you will see that the 1st 8 elements have note ranges from C-2 to G5 but each element is for a different velocity range. The next 8 elements have note ranges from G#5 to G8 and, again, each of the 8 has a different velocity trigger. The 17th element is a common 'Key Off'.

So any given note only uses 1 element meaning a 6 note chord will only use 6 notes of polyphony.

2. Conversely the Amp EG for each element shows fairly high 'decay' and 'release' values. So the notes will tend to linger.

3. The CF2 preset (again on an M8X - but likely the same on the Modx M) has all 8 scenes programmed

Consider these results from a simple test we just conducted:

A. load the CFX2 - it defaults to using scene 1

B. play middle C and the sound dies down within 1 or 2 seconds. As the sound dies down turn the volume all the way up so you can tell just when the sound seems to disappear.

C. IMPORTANT - turn the volume back down so you don't blow your ears out

D. select scene 5

E. play middle C and as the sound dies down turn the volulme all the way up.

F. notice that it takes a good 9-10 seconds for the audible sound to die down. But keep in mind that the sound/envelope could still be active but just inaudible.

G. the note is using polyphony as long as the envelope is active which is 9+ seconds for scene 5

Do the math - if one note uses polyphony for 9+ seconds and you play 3 6-note chords quickly how many notes of polyphony will you be using? 

That CFX2 is an example where it might sound just find for scene 1 and like crap for scene 5 or even other scenes. Hint - take a look at the 'Mixing 1' settings for scenes 1 and 5.

#6 - polyphony issues - Yamaha is tight-lipped about their 'voice stealing' method. But sometimes just moving a part to a different part slot can change which notes get dropped. It doesn't always seem to be the oldest note.

#7 - arps or motion sequences will use polyphony when running in addition to the notes the user plays

#8 - long envelope release times will cause polyphony to be used for longer periods of time

#9 - Sustain pedal use, especially over multiple chords, can cause polyphony issues

#10 - effect settings (reverb, delay, etc) - can cause polyphony issues

A performance configured for use in a small venue like a bar might sound fine but configured for a large hall or stadium might sound like crap because the effect settings were changed.

The Hamburg is pretty good. I'm slightly concerned it might also have too many voices that will drop out when layered with other sounds.

Your concerns would be well-founded. That perf (M8X) has 2 parts and they each use 21 elements with velocity bands.

But do the same scene 1 vs. scene 5 test and you will get the same result. Scene 5 sounds have a MUCH longer decay.

Except now you are starting out with 2 parts making noise instead of just 1 part. So that performance will, by default, be using more polyphony that the CFX2.

Something I've been kind thinking is maybe some of the older Motif sounds in the board might work better since they had less elements and might have the velocity tuned better for a semi weighted keybed.

You are searching for the proverbial 'needle in a haystack'.

Not meant personally but have you heard the famous Clint Eastwood line 'do you feel lucky, punk!'

LOL! Hopefully the comments above will have convinced you that there is no substitute for actually analyzing a preset so you know what it will do and then tweak, and save, it as your own.

Sure - you might get lucky. Or someone might accidentally hit that scene 5 button without you noticing and you pull your hair out trying to figure out what happened.

You are at the 'fork in the road'. Either take control of your instrument or it will take control of you. 

The Yamaha synths need to be programmed to do what YOU want them to do. They only do what they are programmed to do.

Good luck with you new M. Once you get to know it, and how to find your way through it, you'll learn to love it.

But if you run into problems just create a new thread and provide enough SPECIFIC info that someone can try to reproduce the problem.

This is what gets me, we don’t have 128 awm2 voices, we have 128 elements. When a piano has 18 or so, note polyphony is quite low, especially when using a sustain pedal. I know not all elements are played at once, so its fine a lot of the time, but ive been sticking to more basic rock pianos over the more classical ones, as they tend not to have as many elements.

Definitely up the velocity a bit, and use EQ. In fact EQ is very important for me to get the Piano's to work in a mix through a PA. I find at home everything is good, but in a live situation through a PA I find I have to EQ differently.

How can you have 128 elements but not 128 voices?

This is what gets me, we don’t have 128 awm2 voices, we have 128 elements.

If 'Extended' elements are enabled and the element count is set to 128 then all 128 elements are available. Any element with their 'Element Switch' set to ON has potential to use polyphony.

I find at home everything is good, but in a live situation through a PA I find I have to EQ differently.

That is a good #1 'rule of thumb' to use for all of the performances you use at different venues and is what I was referring to above:

Design and test a sound in you home studio and it may sound different on a different model at a gig if you don't take your instrument with you.

The acoustics at a gig are practically assured to be different from the home studio:

1. The room size and configuration.

2. The materials used for the floor, walls, ceiling and furniture.

3. The placement of any other musicians, instruments and amps

4. The sound system at the gig

One working paradigm is, as you alluded, to create separate user performances that are customized for each gig. As in your case each one may actually be the same underlying performance with 'tweaks' made that are needed for a specific venue or band configuration.

Some users also create a separate live set for each gig or at least separate pages for each gig.

The starting point is what I first said as #3:

#3 - create you own, customized, set of performances so that you will always know what they are programmed to do.

Make them your own even if the 'tweaks' are just minor. By having the perfs you use in your user area it is much easier to manage them and keep them backed up.

It took me a few months to get to grips with how different pianos (especially) can sound through a PA, and what EQ was needed. We always use our own PA other than for rehearsals so its not too bad. I use IEM’s and also use them at home, just to keep things at my end consistent. 

It was a huge shock the first time i played a MODX through a PA, but now im used to it.

Excellent! That's the kind of experience that will make you more valuable to a band than just being 'another' keyboard player.

That comes in especially handy when you can't take/use your own keyboard with you and need to make adjustments at the gig to get the sound/mix you need. Having some 'venue' templates set up ahead of time can really help. Good luck!

Dont forget there is also a master EQ that you can use for a quick overall tweak. 

@dave - that's a really good suggestion since it's a quick and easy way to determine if eq can help fix the problem. Later you can always go back in and move the 'eq fix' to the part level if you need to.

At some gigs during sound check you could even ask the sound guy to tweak your eq in their mix to see if that helps.

Posted by: Toby

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@dave - that's a really good suggestion since it's a quick and easy way to determine if eq can help fix the problem. Later you can always go back in and move the 'eq fix' to the part level if you need to.

At some gigs during sound check you could even ask the sound guy to tweak your eq in their mix to see if that helps.

Yeah. I tend to use this depending on what im going through. I sometime find just lowering the bottom end slightly if im going through a larger speaker helps keep things in check. Even Brass and Organ benifit from this. If I find im doing it often ill apply the EQ at Performance level, but generally I find its the Pianos that need more Eq than other bread and butter sounds, so ill do that in the Performance and use the master EQ just to tame the output of the MODX.